Origins
The word 'elf' is one of the oldest words in the English language, and its history reveals a dramatic transformation in how these beings were imagined. It derives from Old English 'ælf' (plural 'ælfe'), from Proto-Germanic *albiz, possibly connected to PIE *albho- (white, bright, shining) — though this etymological link is debated. If the connection holds, elves were originally 'the shining ones,' beings of luminous beauty.
In early Germanic and Norse belief, elves were not the diminutive, whimsical creatures of modern Christmas decorations. They were powerful supernatural beings, comparable in status to minor gods. Old Norse distinguished between 'ljósálfar' (light-elves), who dwelt in Álfheimr (Elf-home) and were 'fairer than the sun to look at,' and 'dökkálfar' (dark-elves), who lived underground. In the Prose Edda, the god Freyr rules Álfheimr, and elves receive sacrificial offerings (álfablót) — practices suggesting they occupied a position in pre-Christian Germanic religion comparable to saints or ancestral spirits.
The Anglo-Saxons took elves very seriously. Medical texts contain remedies against 'elf-shot' (ælf-scot) — the belief that sudden, sharp pains were caused by invisible elf-arrows. Many Anglo-Saxon personal names incorporate 'ælf,' treating elf-association as auspicious: Ælfrēd (Alfred, 'elf-counsel'), Ælfwine ('elf-friend'), Ælfric ('elf-power'), Ælfgifu ('elf-gift'). These names suggest that while elves were dangerous, their association was also desirable — an elf-named child was blessed with beauty and otherworldly favor.
Literary History
The diminution of elves from powerful supernatural beings to tiny, cute figures occurred gradually from the late medieval period through the Renaissance. Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (c. 1596) portrays them as small enough to hide in acorn cups. By the Victorian era, elves had been fully domesticated into children's literature. The association with Christmas and Santa's workshop is an American invention of the nineteenth century.
J.R.R. Tolkien, a professor of Anglo-Saxon, deliberately restored the older, grander conception of elves in his fiction. His Elves — tall, immortal, beautiful, and powerful — are explicitly based on the 'ljósálfar' of Norse mythology, and he expressed frustration that the word 'elf' had been 'degraded' by association with tiny, flower-dwelling sprites. The German cognate 'Alb' (also 'Alp') took a darker semantic path — it came to mean specifically a malevolent spirit that sits on the chest of a sleeper, producing the 'Albtraum' or 'Alptraum' (elf-dream), the word for 'nightmare' in German.